44th Toronto International Film Festival Coverage: Day Two

Friday, September 6th, 2019 by Ian Evans

Just Mercy courtesy of TIFF.

Day two got underway at Roy Thomson Hall with the gala presentation of Destin Daniel Cretton’s Just Mercy. Michael B. Jordan plays a Harvard-educated lawyer who goes to Alabama to fight for the wrongfully condemned. He works with a local woman (Brie Larson) who is committed to prisoners’ rights and one of his death row clients is a man (Jamie Foxx) wrongfully convicted of murdering a white woman. Despite evidence that his client didn’t commit the crime, Jordan’s character faces a battle for justice that’s equal parts discrimination and indifference.

That was followed by Roger Michell’s Blackbird. It’s the story of a terminally ill mother (Susan Sarandon) who has chosen to die with dignity and invites the family over to the country house for one final gathering only to see it turn a long-simmering conflict between her two daughters (Kate Winslet and Mia Wasikowska) reach its boiling point. The film examines the contrasts between the dying and the soon-to-be bereaved.

The VISA Screening Room over at the Princess of Wales Theatre opened its second night with a screening of Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s The Friend. Based on a true story from an Esquire article, it tells the story of a man (Jason Segel) who helps his best friends (Dakota Johnson and Casey Affleck) by moving in to help them and their two daughters through a terminal cancer diagnosis. Segel’s character put his own life, relationships, and job on hold to help, proving the adage that there’s the family you’re born with and the one you choose.

The VISA Screening Room also played host to William Nicholson’s Hope Gap, which stars Annette Bening and Bill Nighy as a long-married couple navigating the rough waters of a split.